I’ve already reviewed the solo mode for Wyrmspan, the remake of the popular and critically acclaimed Stonemeier game Wingspan. I recently played a three player game of Wingspan. I thought I’d take the opportunity to drop a short review of the digital version of Wingspan. The digital game was also played three player, with two normal difficulty AI players. (I came in a close second in both the physical and digital games.)
Wingspan is a card-based, engine building board game. In it, a player adds cards representing real-life birds to three biomes. To play a bird, the player must pay food resources. Different birds require different combinations of food. If playing any birds in a biome after the first, the player must also pay eggs that they steal from the nests of birds already in their tableau. Each bird has a special power that activates either when the bird is played; when the player collects food, eggs, or new bird cards; when another player performs a particular action; at the end of a round; or at the end of the game.
Points are added up after the end of the game, after the end of the fourth round. Each birds played adds the number of points printed on its card, (probably) between 1 and 8 points. Each round has a goal, such as the largest number of birds in the water biome. Players score points according to who has the largest number of birds (eggs, cards, etc.) at the end of that round. Each player also has at least one secret goal, such as playing birds with a color in their name, that can provide points. Players also score a point for each egg in their tableau, each bird card they have tucked behind another bird card (representing the fact that the top bird ate the tucked bird), or food item cached on a bird.
Arguably, the hardest part of Wingspan is remembering all of the ways to score points. The cards will probably give a player the biggest chunk of their points, but this will probably be less than half their total. It is hard to win without doing well in the end-of-round scoring. The winner will most likely also get a bunch of points from eggs or tucked cards. Given that I lost the digital game by 3 points and the physical game by 4 (It should have been 1. I made a mistake on my last turn that cost me three points.), exploiting any source of points is critical.
Multiplayer Wingspan is almost a few people sitting around a table playing individual solo games. There is some minor competition for bird cards and a little more tense competition for available food resources. That is about it for player interaction. A very few birds may allow a player to steal a food resource from one of their neighbors. That is the worst of the take-that interactions.
Most of the game is a game balancing getting cards to play, getting the food and eggs needed to play them, and actually playing the cards. Until a player can build up an engine to produce at least one of these resources, they are unlikely to have a comfortable amount of any. A player needs to plan at least two or three turns ahead. The game state is dynamic enough that looking ahead more than that quickly gets into the realm of diminishing returns. To me, that is enough to hold my interest but not to be overwhelming.
The digital (PC/Steam) version plays the same as the physical game. The biggest problem most digital adaptations of board games have is the user interface. Rarely can the physical board be displayed on a computer screen and still be readable. What makes or breaks a digital adaptation is how it presents the game components. The adaptation of Wingspan does a pretty good job. The way the biomes are displayed is an acceptable compromise. The game can only show one biome in the player’s tableau at a time. It is easy to scroll between them, and a player rarely needs to see multiple biomes simultaneously. The game only shows the available food resources on the forest biome screen. That is a mild annoyance, not a big deal. Perhaps the biggest problem is viewing the other players’ tableaus. A player effectively has to go to another screen to do so. Since Wingspan is an almost-solo-mode game, this is not something I would do often. In the physical game, I would occasionally glance at other players’ tableaus to see how many birds they have played, how many eggs they have, or any other information that could allow me to evaluate how I was doing compared to them. It is not critical to the game. Overall, I would say the adaptation is perfectly serviceable.
I did not find the digital game as satisfying as the physical one. Perhaps because my opponents disappeared into the background so much in the digital game, it did not seem as much of a competition. Perhaps because the AI players took their turns so quickly, I did not have as much time to think and to plan. I do not think I did any less thinking or planning when playing the digital game, but it seemed to engage my brain less.
Overall, the digital version of Wingspan is a perfectly good way to play the game solo. The user interface is easy to learn. The AIs work pretty well. I still prefer to play the physical game when possible.
Den of the Red Wolf 